


Bound

by SharpestRose



Category: Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003), Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sixteen years now it has been, sixteen years in which Sam has been unable to forget how Gollum looked before he died. He hated the creature, that's sure enough, but that death wasn't one that Sam would have wished on Sauron himself. And then Frodo had looked down at the ring, gleaming on his finger; visible as fire in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound

Frodo doesn't come to the Shire. He writes, letter after letter full of the same old gentle sarcasm and strange whimsy, but he doesn't come himself. Sam keeps the letters, for the most part, and pretends that nothing's different. As with everything nowtimes, the rambling dear messages maintain that lie almost perfectly. A sharpness of a phrase, an allusion to some violence, these things are easily ignored by Sam. He's learnt the knack of seeing with his eyes half-shut.

 _A packet of seeds for a September birthday, hard little pellets that Sam put into the best soil in the Bag End gardens. The flowers that grew were strong and creeping, and choked the other blooms that year._

Sixteen years now it has been, sixteen years in which Sam has been unable to forget how Gollum looked before he died. He hated the creature, that's sure enough, but that death wasn't one that Sam would have wished on Sauron himself. And then Frodo had looked down at the ring, gleaming on his finger; visible as fire in the dark. Looked down and laughed, and Sam's eyes had shut frantically. Invisibility would have been a thousand times better than the expression Frodo wore in that moment.

 _Once wee Pippin ate some leaves from those flowers, and it seemed that he'd be lost for sure that night. Sam will never be able to shake the memory of his son struggling to breathe, harsh high cries ripped from the child's throat. Rosie brewed tea steeped with kingsfoil and they forced Pip to drink cup after cup, but it seemed that nothing would help. Even now, years later, the boy keeps to his chair or the bed mostly._

But some day yet Sam will learn the knack of forgetting that, too. He'll walk with blinkers on, like other folk have taught themselves. His Rosie doesn't say a word about it, so Sam thinks it's likely she doesn't think of it either. It's never been her way to dwell on things she can't fix. And, after all, the Shire is as safe as it ever was, isn't it? The hobbits have nothing to worry about. Travellers don't even bring news in anymore, because nobody wants to hear it. Wars and murders in far-off places. And when Sam writes to Frodo and asks why, why, why all this blood?, Frodo's answers are always calm and sensible. _If they do not see that I can be terrible, my dear Sam, they will never allow me the power to do good_ , he writes, before asking politely after Sam's health.

 _Sometimes Frodo sends more seeds. Sam keeps them shut up in a chest in one of the store rooms. Some days he's sure they're lying there in wait, for the day some poor fool will put them in the earth. Then he shakes himself, and forgets the foolishness. They're just seeds, after all._

His writing is so familiar, black on white with a smudge on the lower tails. Frodo could never keep his pen steady on ys and gs. His fingers were always moving on to the next letter already.

 _If they do not see that I can be terrible, my dear Sam, they will never allow me the power to do good._

There's the rub, because Frodo's rule is one of immense goodness. He is just and merciful to those who submit to his dominion. Towers may have fallen, woodlands razed to ash on the ground; but, like a parent with a punished child, Frodo takes the people in his arms and soothes the bruises on their skin. Sam supposes that after a while the people forget who laid the blows in the first place. People can forget most anything, if they make the effort.

 _Whatever else there is to say about them, they are beautiful flowers. So colourful that it seems the brightness will seep out of them and spread over the world, and it's hard not to smile at the sight of that riot of shades in the sunlight. It's easy to forget the way they smell in the evenings, when the light is strong._

The Shire is prospering, the crops are good and the seasons are good and everything, at the heart of it, is good. His children are growing up sturdy and strong, and Rosie is a good and sensible mother for them. When Sam half-shuts his eyes, he lives a life that is wonderful, more than he ever dreamed he would have.

 _Some days he remembers the years Before, when there were only pansies and nasturians and ordinary roses in the gardens. None so beautiful as the flowers there now, but there was something good and sweet about clipping them. Some in a pot for Mr Frodo's study, some tied with string to take down to the Cotton's in the evening. Somewhere in his heart, behind his eyes, those days go on forever._

But when he opens them, there are creeping shadows in the sunlight. Elanor, oldest and fairest of his brood, with her eyes as blue as winter wind. Frodo named her, though he has never seen the girl. Suggested the name in his letter of congratulations, sending more money and jewels than Sam and Rosie could need in a thousand lives with a thousand children. Elanor, who cuts a hen's head off halfway to see if it will run in circles and then giggles and runs off to play some other game. There were many children like her born in those first few years, with pale complexions and knowing, almost mocking, smiles. There have been more every year since, and Sam wonders if some day all hobbits will be like them and the old sort will be forgotten.

 _Elanor braids the flowers into her hair and twirls about, petals falling around her in an arc. She looks more beautiful, more alive, than anything Sam has ever seen, and he can feel how proud Rosie is of their miraculously lovely child. The colours of the blossoms suit her face, and she breathes the smell in as if it were sweet as honey._

When Sam and Rosie were small, it was considered a great treat to get a kitten from a stable-litter, some small huddle of grey fur. All the children would beg the wife of whomever owned the stable in question, pleading that their own store-houses were overrun with rats and a cat was direly needed. Of course, it was months until a kitten grew enough to be any use as a ratcatcher, but those months were what the children loved the best. Saucers of milk by the fire, envious siblings begging for a turn at patting the tiny pet.

 _Some days he's tempted to leave the garden to itself, to simply forbid his children to go near and shut the back door tightly. But that's against the grain of his nature, and some innate gardener-sense in him refuses to believe that it will never be proper again._

Now the stable-litters go unclaimed. These new, fair children have no interest in pets, yet somehow the barns are never overloaded with unwanted toms and tabbies. Perhaps the children have an interest in them after all.

 _Bag End's garden is the envy of all the others in the Shire._

Elanor is a sweet and charming girl, even at fifteen she still calls Sam 'daddy', but it's a sweetness tinged with cloying rot. She delights in telling her younger brothers and sisters that there's no such thing as tooth fairies and solstice wishes, and then she turns and cuddles away their disappointment. Confused, the children have come to think of hurt and comfort as things that come from the same loving hand. Some day, when death and forgetfulness pushes the old age past memory, everyone will feel like that.

 _Sam's children love to hear him talk about flowers. Rose-lass curls on his lap and smiles up at him. "You always sound so happy when you talk about them," she says with a lisp. But his favourite flowers are the ones he tucks into bed at night - Rose, small Daisy, and Elanor. They kiss him goodnight and his heart fills up. He could never hate a flower, even one he was afraid of._

And now, Frodo's last letter. _I want you and Elanor to visit_. Sam is forever thankful that Frodo considers Rosie and the other children beneath his notice. It makes a twinge of something sad pull in Sam, because Frodo and Rose would have been sugar and cream together. In a different way of things, she might have pulled him out of himself a little. Instead, they've all been pulled in, a silty green undertow.

 _She loves me, she loves me not, Merry sing-songs as he pulls the petals off a freshly-picked bud one by one. She loves me! He finishes with a triumphant crow, happy at the flower's promise._

They won't come back, Sam and Elanor. He looks at the green dusk on the fields, the children playing a run-about game. He left all this behind once before to try and save it, and he will again. If they succeed, they will probably die, and if the strength fails them...

 _"You're a marvel, Sam," Frodo used to say, wandering out into the garden mid-morning, ink on his cheek and eyes lit up with Elvish stories. "My poor garden would be a sorry place without you in it."_

They won't come back.

 _"Without you, Mr Frodo, there'd be no garden for me to work in."_

Elanor is laughing with Goldilocks over some silly joke, and for this moment she is as pure and fair as she should be. She is as unpredictable as a flame, and Sam wonders if she'll be friend or foe when it comes down to it.

 _"Oh, this garden will outlive us all, I think."_

But then, until the end comes, there's never a way of knowing who is which.


End file.
